Homecoming Roundup 2017

By:
Spencer DeRoos,
A&S CommunicationsThu, 10/12/2017

Alumni, students, and Ithaca area community members will come together Oct. 19-21 for a weekend of reconnecting, celebrating and football during Homecoming 2017. The weekend is highlighted by many Arts & Sciences sponsored events.

Though not an official part of Homecoming, many alumni will start the weekend at the Voyager Celebration, 8 p.m., Oct. 19, Bailey Hall with a panel, “40 Years of Cosmic Discovery: Celebrating the Voyager Missions and Humanity’s Message to Space.” With an introduction by Cornell Provost Michael Kotlikoff, the panel will feature people who worked on the mission: Ann Druyan, Emmy- and Peabody-award winning writer/producer/director and creative director of NASA’s Voyager Interstellar Message; Frank Drake, chairman emeritus, SETI Institute and creator of the Drake Equation; Steve Squyres, Cornell’s James A. Weeks Professor and principal investigator of the Mars Exploration Rovers mission; Lisa Kaltenegger, associate professor of astronomy and director of Cornell’s Carl Sagan Institute; and Jonathan Lunine, the David C. Duncan Professor in the Physical Sciences and director of the Cornell Center for Astrophysics and Planetary Science.

Caroline Levine, the David and Kathleen Ryan Professor of the Humanities in the Department of English, will give an interactive talk, “Return to the Classroom: Trashy Fun or Secret Treasure? The Hidden Value of Detective Fiction,” 11:30 a.m. Oct. 21, Hall of Fame Room, Friends Hall. Her talk will show how detective fiction actually provides ways to think about many of the serious questions we face: what is knowledge, and how do we discover it? What counts as good evidence? How do we know what motivates people to act as they do?

The Homecoming Arts Tour (leaves from MVR Gallery of Martha Van Rensselaer Hall), 9:30 and 10 a.m., Oct. 21, will offer a glimpse of the diverse fine art and cultural offerings at Cornell. One stop will be in the Groos Family Atrium in Klarman Hall, to explore and learn more about the Cornell Plaster Cast Collection on display.

As part of the Big Red Fan Festival, Noon-3 p.m., Oct. 21 before the football game, the Department of Mathematics will be hosting Balloon Geometry, an interactive way to turn balloons into platonic solids (fun geometric shapes) that can be worn, carried, waved, and more.

The Anthropology Collections Open House, noon-2 p.m., Oct. 21, offers participants the chance to see selections from the 20,000+ pieces in the Cornell Anthropology Collections, which includes a wide variety of artifacts from the past million years.

Latina/o Studies Fridays with Faculty Luncheon Seminar, noon-1 p.m., Oct. 20, Fourth floor, Rockefeller Hall. Shanon Gleeson, associate professor of labor relations, law and history, will talk about her research and work in progress.